I look to Finn and find him shrugging. “The ones who run Xi Factory?”
Thoroughly confused, but also intrigued, we turn back to the plates. “Look,” I say, pointing at another one. This one is different than the others, which all show the same scene. Pant-wearing Matrons doing… something or other, I don’t know.
But this plate is all black with a bunch of bright green letters and symbols that fill the entire screen from top to bottom, though not left to right.
At the very bottom is a single upright line. Maybe an L? Capital I? Not sure, but it’s flashing.
“What the hell language is this?” Finn asks.
“Is it a language? Because it doesn’t look like a language to me. It looks like… random.”
“I don’t think it’s random, Jasina. It has to mean something. I mean, look around. Something is happening here, right?”
I do have to admit that something is most definitely happening here.
“Look,” he says. “What’s this?”
“Ohh!” I brighten. Because he’s pointing to… well, I don’t have a name for it, but long, and black, and sitting right underneath the black plate with the weird symbols on it. But the cool thing is that it’s got letters on it. Letters I recognize. They’re even all lit up in the color of spark. Little… tabs or something. “Switches!” I say. Then I point at them. “They’re switches. Like the ones on the glass desk back home.”
Finn ponders this. “I think you’re right. So theydosomething. What do you think they do?”
I shrug. “Should I push one?”
Finn laughs. “What if we blow the place up?”
“What if it reveals a secret door? That opens up to a secret passageway? Or,” I say, ready to make more guesses because he’s smiling at me and his eyes are shining. “What if your father’s face appears? Hmm? And he’s got another message for us.”
“Doubtful,” Finn says. “How would he get here?”
“Maybe the Looking Glasses are connected somehow? Maybe we could send a message back home and tell them what we’ve found?”
Finn hovers a finger over one of the switches on the long black thing.
I lean in to read what’s written on the switch. “Enter,” I say. “What do you think that means?”
“Fuck it,” he says. And then he presses it.
Nothing happens.
It’s all very anticlimactic. “Oh, well,” I say, sighing and turning back towards the door. “It was worth—” But I stop midsentence because all the plates are now showing something different. It’s no longer Matrons wearing pants and doing… whatever it is they’re doing. Instead, all the plates show different views of a massive room filled with?—
Finn leans in. “What the hell are those things?”
My brain is practically on fire trying to think of a word to describe what we’re seeing. Because the room is filled with…
“Cocoons?” Finn asks. “They look like cocoons.”
“They’re… raising… butterflies?” I ask. “Monster butterflies?” Because the cocoons are massive. There’s a worker messing with one, and the cocoons are bigger than it. I’d guess at least six feet long and three feet wide.
Finn looks at me, his eyes filled with confusion. “Thousands of monster butterflies?”
“Oh, my God. What if it’s not butterflies. What if it’s giant silkworms?”
Finn laughs. “Why would they need a million miles of silk, Jasina?”
“Duh. Gala dresses. Maybe they’re big partiers here? Maybe that’s why the city is such a mess?”
He just shakes his head at me. “I don’t think?—”
